Posted
by
timothy
on Friday March 13, 2015 @07:15PM
from the biggest-portion-is-the-lion's-share dept.

schwit1 writes If you fly a drone and post footage on YouTube, you could end up with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration. Earlier this week, the agency sent a legal notice to Jayson Hanes, a Tampa-based drone hobbyist who has been posting drone-shot videos online for roughly the last year. The FAA said that, because there are ads on YouTube, Hanes's flights constituted a commercial use of the technology subject to stricter regulations and enforcement action from the agency. It said that if he did not stop flying 'commercially,' he could be subject to fines or sanctions.

I think you want to refer to the Commerce Clause. And, the action is not agains "speech" per se, but against the commercial use of drones. The FAA won't bother him about advertising revenue from non-drone videos, or about using drones as a hobby. It's when he combines the two that it becomes a commercial activity (and yes, earning advertising revenue via Youtube is Interstate Commerce).

Once you start arguing that it's not the operator making money, you open a slippery slope where one person makes money on videos (making it commercial) which a friend made using a drone. Then, they reverse roles.

The simple fact is, money is being made from the video, which makes it commerce. Even if "the guy" didn't receive any payment, he is clearly participating in Interstate Commerce, which is subject to regulation.

As for youtube, some accounts receive a portion of the ad revenue based on the volume of hits. It's possible that his account has enough hits that he is getting revenue from posting drone videos online.

However, I just read the letter and do not see where it mentioned adds. It mentioned they receive a complaint about videos posted to youtube and after looking at them, the "complaint" does appear valid, then drops a list of a lot of rules concerning commercial and hobby use.

I did watch a couple of the videos and they seem well produced and of decent quality but they also were of events and locations which may give the impression they may have been produced for commercial reasons (eg, promoting the water tribe event or the closed down pier building, a fleet maintinence facility are a couple I noticed that might be construed as possibly being commercial in nature as they could be for hire scenarios without actually asking to find out) .

FTA : "Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube"

So he has told YouTube to generate revenue for him from his videos, which is very different from Google generating revenue for themselves from their own platform. Facebook wont give you money for posting pictures.

As the content provider you can turn the ads off, I think that would cover it. Settings -> Channel -> Advanced -> Uncheck "Allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos". Obviously you also must also not have enabled monetization.

No, I post the video with all the background noise, including the cheering and the music, and various copyright holders flag them as infringing and restrict distribution, add ads and/or mute the video.

I don't appeal, because copyright law favours them. Instead I tell people that copyright is broken and it's a fucked up situation and I let DJs know which songs get muted on Youtube so that those songs stop getting played in competitions.

So you're engaging in commercial activity right now, and I am too? We're both posting on Slashdot, after all.

>Once you start arguing that it's not the operator making money, you open a slippery slope

The whole "standard" you've invented out of whole cloth here? Yeah. Not part of the commerce clause. This IS the exact argument: who makes the money. If it could be anyone in the world tangentially related to the person providing the content, then your viewing a billboard while driving would be interstate com

Google's not flying the drones, so they don't fall under the FAA's jurisdiction.

Unfortunately the ruling makes perfect sense. That doesn't mean the rules themselves make perfect sense, but I'd imagine the pressure would be against the FAA increasing the number of things that fall under "non-commercial therefore more liberally regulated" use. And it's hard to come up with a better set of rules that wouldn't have loopholes so large you could fly a 747 loaded with freight through.

The guy has flagged his videos as monetized and earn advertising money from views.

If the videos were NOT monetized he would have a much better case...

From article:"Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube but that he has never received a payment from Google and the revenue he's technically earned from Google’s ads is less than a dollar."

Having low views and not making much from it is hardly a defense.

As much as I hate to say it, he is monetizing his drone flights and is sor

Youtubers with popular videos get an offer from google to "monetize" the videos. If they accept, google inserts ads into your video, and pays them some of what they earn from advertisers". If you don't do this then there will normally be no ads in your youtube videos (though there may be ads elsewhere on the page, I guess - I use adblocking, so I'm not sure).

So a standard youtube video is non-commercial, since the person who created and/or uploaded the video gets no compensation for doing so. A subset of "monetized" videos are commercial because of the income from the inserted ads. I can see the FAA being against the latter kind of youtube drone video, but not the former kind.

That's not how it works anymore. You used to have to be invited to be a partner. Now anyone can be a partner and monetize their videos.

As someone who puts a lot of effort into making videos, thanks a whole bunch for adblocking away the tiny bit of money we get for our labor. I don't bother with doing any techie type twist to a video to appeal to that demo because you all block and the ads so it's worthless to do anything for you. Getting shared on Reddit gives you lots of views and zero money.

No, but he still is. As the copyright holder, he would need to make a reasonable effort to stop you, or he would still be participating in commerce. IOW, no, there's not a loophole where he can have a friend post the videos.

The commercial use regulations are OBVIOUSLY meant to keep people from flying passengers or freight when they don't know what they're doing. Uploading a video to youtube from a drone does not endanger the public in any way so long as it's not being used to stalk somebody or invade their privacy. Obviously, footage from public spaces taken too high to make out individuals does neither of those things.

So, here's the point of the subject line: If we're going to apply laws and regulations to the utmost literal interpretation without any kind of reason or sensibility, then why don't we fire the FAA and replace them with robots? The only benefit to having actual humans perform these duties is that they can apply some measure of human common sense, whereas software would mechanically interpret everything exactly as programmed with no regard for the details.

There are a number of Youtube videos of people flying hobby drones well above 10,000 feet. Above 10,000, several safety measures go out of effect - airline passengers can remove their seat belts, airliners can exceed 250 knots, etc - so a hobby drone at 10,001 feet is much more dangerous than a drone at 9,999. Above 18,000, all flights must be conducted under IFR and pilots are no longer required to see and avoid - so they stop looking out the window and get busy with other tasks. So a hobby drone at 18,001 feet is yet more dangerous still, as well as being a whole new level of illegal.

The FAA, for very good common-sense safety reasons, wants like hell to put a stop to this. However, Congress legislated away the FAA's power to actually regulate or provide standards for hobby drones. The FAA can't say "don't fly them above 10,000 feet" because they are now prohibited by the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 from *any* rulemaking regarding model aircraft. And according to the Act, the model aircraft can be *up to 55 pounds* - and it seems like FAA concepts like "controlled airspace" don't apply. The only requirement is that if you are going to fly within 5 miles of an airport, the operator has to provide prior notice - *not ask permission* - from the airport's air traffic control.

During the period 1958-2012, the FAA was solely responsible for aviation safety and airspace regulation, and maintained a profoundly excellent safety record. From 2012, there are now two agencies responsible for air safety - the FAA for manned aircraft, and vaguely-defined "community-based set of safety guidelines" for recreational drones in the same airspace. Common sense says that this can't, and won't, work - so basically, Congress has decided that we will wait until a drone takes down an airliner, then over-react and probably outlaw all hobby drones everywhere. And probably blame the FAA.

This is what passes for policy-making in the US today. It's really very sad.

If Haynes has monetized his channel, then any filming he does for it is commercial filming. YouTube videos are a full-time job for some people.
If he owned a plane, took a camera on it, filmed stuff from it, and got money when people watched the film, that would be commercial flying. This is no different.

If Haynes has monetized his channel, then any filming he does for it is commercial filming.

Not so fast. The IRS has something to say about this topic [irs.gov], since they draw a distinction between for-profit businesses and hobbies that happen to make a profit. Just because his videos are theoretically monetized (he has yet to actually receive any money), doesn't mean that they are a commercial venture. Given that he's operating at a loss (e.g. equipment, time, and travel costs), and that he doesn't seem to have any plans to turn things around or live off the $0 he's made so far, it's more likely that his

I am very dubious about how the FAA is dealing with this, but your suggestion is beyond stupid. You are advocating shutting down the mechanisms that make aviation possible. Do you think that shutting down national/international air traffic control is a good idea? Do you think that suspending oversight on aircraft maintenance will keep planes flying safely?

How stupid are you? Grow up. Your opinion is senseless. Do yourself, and everyone else here a favor and think before you post again. That is, if you can

if they have enough budget and manpower to spend it searching YouTube for drone videos,

They read a complaint that was sent to them, watched the video that was sent to them, wrote a letter, stamped it, and sent it. The amount of money wasted by people looking at this thread on Slashdot instead of doing their jobs was greater than what was spent on this enforcement. But hey, sure, cut their budget when their equipment is 40+ years old and air traffic is increasing greatly. That'll learn them.

The FAA isn't 'fiddling with advertising'. They are fiddling with the definition of 'commercial'. The fact that the commerce in question is advertising is only peripheral. If the guy was delivering Girl Scout cookies, they would still be having kittens about it.

The FCC is doing the classic straight and narrow interpretation of a law when some common sense would have just had the committee that figured this one out just have a couple more donuts and call it a day.

Can we just call it what it is? It's a "toy helicopter", not a "drone". That helps get the conversation on the right track.

No it doesn't. That just sidetracks the conversation completely and leads into another unrelated thread in which someone points out that "drone" is a colloquial superset of UAVs that includes "toy helicopter," the aircraft in this article, and whatever more limited definition you have in your head. It's pointless, non-contributory pedantry.

We had toy helicopters for years before we had drones. There's a huge difference as "drones" fly autonomously or semi-autonomously. If you've ever watched liveleak videos of drone use you'll note the thing flies itself, the operator works on targeting and killing people. The interface is extremely high level. The operator marks an area as the target and the software alters the flight path and camera angle to make that area available for attack.

as someone who actually flies RC Helicopters... they're not toys. They can be dangerous. I fly things large enough that if an untrained person flew, they could quite literally kill someone with it.

Multi-rotors might not have the same amount of force as a larger sized rc helicopter but they can still inflict some serious damage if someone doesn't really know what they're doing with it. Nowadays all the multi-rotors are being sold with gps systems and 'rescue' modes to make it easier for someone to fly

You know what? Prove that the video was shot within the confines of US airspace. Recognizable dandmarks are present, you say? Well, then prove that it's not a computer rendering and is, in fact, a drone-shot video.

Um, this craft is NOT a drone, not by a long chalk. A drone is an autonomous vehicle, capable of taking off, flying a pre-programmed route and landing. This is always under human copntrol at all times so it's just a radio controlled aircraft.

Regardless of the fact that all common definitions disagree with you, the DJI Phantom 2 shown in the video is actually capable of what you describe as a drone.

Also Phantoms are rarely flown under direct human control. The vast majority of them are flown in an autonomous GPS holding mode where altitude and location are locked and maintained by a computer and a human simply sends a direction override, and they all switch to fully autonomous mode if the connection to the remote is lost.

Yes moving images free on a vast "public commons" that people can see, share, comment on, link to and ask questions about.
The hi res look down ability is now in the public hands to share and talk about.
Sites can now be seen from above, shared and commented on.

The FAAâ(TM)s goal is to promote voluntary compliance by educating individual UAS operators about how they can operate safely under current regulations and laws,â the agency said. âoeThe FAAâ(TM)s guidance calls for inspectors to notify someone with a letter and then follow up. The guidance does not include language about advertising. The FAA will look into the matter. [photograph...acrime.com]

I've got a drone video (shot at BurningMan before the anti-drone restrictions) that has over 700,000 views. Being it's from BurningMan I did not monetize it. However, I did patch in music I liked and "acknowledged third party content" once YouTube's systems identified it. The copyright owner on the music caused ads to appear. I don't see a cent of it, and the 'monetize' checkbox is turned off on that video.

Still, I gotta wonder if now I'm going to get an FAA letter too, as they'll see a high-viewer-count "drone video" with ads on it.

There are too many comparisons between a person flying a single drone for recreational use and another person flying a single drone for commercial use. That is not the problem. The real problem is the difference between a few people flying a few drones for a couple of hours a week and a number of companies flying hundreds of drones for many more hours each day of the week. The expected number of accidents for commercial drones is much higher than for recreational drones. The skies can handle a few unregulated drones. Add a few hundred commercial drones to the same space and there will be collisions, crashes and injuries. Had the FAA allowed free use of commercial drones they would be the first agency blamed when someone got hurt.

Think of the commercial interests who might want to use drones;1. Deliveries; food, medications, small package, etc.2. News agencies3. Paparazzi4. Remote tourismThere are many other commercial uses of drones. The difference between recreational and commercial drone use is numbers. Just look at the issue with paparazzi. Do you really want 30 or 40 drones flown by inexperienced people hovering close to crowds hoping to get a good photograph? Do you really want hundreds of drones delivering packages in urban areas?

The FAA has yet to work out how to license commercial use so they can control congestion and flight rules. They also need rules to be able to identify the owner of drones when something goes wrong. These problems are being looked into but the solutions are not as simple as some people seem to believe. Some of the simple problems have been worked out but all the issues need to be worked out before large numbers of drones can be licensed.

simply posting the video to youtube does not in and of itself, generate income.

Allowing youtube to monetize the video, and their subsequent royalty payment, DOES generate income.

The legal grey territory, would be with Youtube making money from videos (used to bring in users, who then view youtube only ads) of people's drone use. Youtube would then be generating income from private drine use, making it commercial, but not to the drone operators.

The proper remedy here, is to make youtube and other video sites not be able to collect income from uploaded videos of drone flight.

Not to penalize the drone operators, who simply want to share videos of drone flight with other enthusiasts, without a profit motive.

simply posting the video to youtube does not in and of itself, generate income.

Yes, but he is a registered ad affiliate of Youtube. In other words, he has given his name, his mailing address, and his social security number in the hope of one day, having enough subscribers and viewers to receive an actual check through the mail.

From his own attorney:

Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube but that he has never received a payment from Google and the revenue he's technically earned from Google’s ads is less than a dollar.

Granted, the number of video views hasn't met the minimum threshold to be cut an actual check yet, but his intent is there. And the fact that he hasn't cancelled his affiliate status with Youtube yet, which would solve the entire problem in one swoop without needing to delete his existing channel, just means that he's hoping to generate enough page views through an artificially created controversy.

Yes, this has the possibility to get really deep. Suppose I was flying a drone and somebody else took pictures and posted them on a not-for-profit site and then somebody saw them and Linked them to YouTube. Now there are three degrees of separation between the drone operator and the person profiting from the footage. It is possible that they don't even know who the drone operator is.

The proper remedy here, is to make youtube and other video sites not be able to collect income from uploaded videos of drone flight.

Not to penalize the drone operators, who simply want to share videos of drone flight with other enthusiasts, without a profit motive.

Where do you think the money comes from to run the youtube servers, hire their sysadmins, and their programmers?

People get confused because the internet is full of "free" stuff, they think they have a right to free stuff. But actually, nothing is free. You pay for all your free content online (with a few exceptions like wikipedia) by being the product. Google is selling information about you to advertisers (and Adwords make more money for Google then any of their other ventures, like Android).

I have no illusions about this. There is nothing wrong with Youtube getting monetary reimbursment with advertisments on videos that dont have a legal mandate to not be for profit to exist. Kittens? Put all the ads you want.

Drones? Now you are getting into sticky waters.

Youtube can fingerprint if there is a tiny blurp of copyrighted music in the background. Surely they can find a way to fingerprint drone footage, and black list their ad injector appropriately.

YouTube is adding the adverts (and making the money for its parent company).

YouTube is only adding ads because the guy posting them has expressly said he wants YouTube to couple his material with ads, and the whole idea is that once he has enough viewers, he (the guy posting the videos) will get a piece of the ad revenue. You know, deliberate commercial activity.

The government doesn't want you to make money, especially if you do so in a new and innovative way. THAT, my friend, is the problem.

That is not really what is going on. This is a simple case of regulatory capture. The FAA is staffed by pilots, whose friends are pilots, and they regulate pilots. All of these pilots see commercial use of drones as a threat to their livelihood. So rather than doing what is in the best interest of the American people, the FAA is pushing the agenda of the people and organizations they are supposed to be regulating. Regulations on drone use should be based on weight, altitude, location, method of control, payload, etc., not some stupid commercial/hobbyist distinction.

The government doesn't want you to make money, especially if you do so in a new and innovative way. THAT, my friend, is the problem.

That is not really what is going on. This is a simple case of regulatory capture.

It's not really that simple, and the grandparent's position is not without merit.

You'll note that *amateurs* are not allowed to operate drones commercially, and *commoners* are not allowed to start a business operating drones (for remote crop/herd inspection, search and rescue, real estate videos), but big players such as Amazon and FedEx will be granted commercial licenses to do so.

It's the same with any business in the US: the big, entrenched businesses are given all the exceptions, all the subsidies, and all the tax breaks in the name of "jobs", while making it impossible for new companies to form and hire grow. As a concrete example, it is impossible to start a company (however small) to compete against GE because GE pays no taxes [nytimes.com].

It's a stupid policy that's indirectly driving the economy of the country into the ground. Big, entrenched companies don't hire more people when given money, *small* businesses hire people when they grow to become big ones. Propping up a big, weak company at the expense of stifling smaller companies is the source of much stagnation in this country.

We have an opportunity to make great progress in an emerging technology, and by holding the US back all the advances will be made in other economic climates.

Look for the US to become a third-world nation in the next decade or so.

are also big enough to go through the processes to properly train their people to ensure they're not causing disasters. Larger drones used for commercial purposes are, well, larger. If one of those toys you buy at Wal-Mart falls out of the sky I'm not so worried. Worst you do is dent my car. If a big commercial drone falls you don't dent it, you wreak it.

You see, regulation is _hard_. It's hard because everytime you write a regulation there's a thousand yahoos lookin' for a loop hole. It's like the monk

All of these pilots see commercial use of drones as a threat to their livelihood.

Yeah, right. So these drones are going to start flying people and cargo around? Nope. Not anything heavier than a briefcase anyway. And if the drones ARE used for hauling stuff around (ie, commercial use), then the pilots of said drones need to be certified. No threat to pilots jobs whatsoever.

Yeah, right. So these drones are going to start flying people and cargo around?

Plenty of pilots make money taking aerial photos, inspecting fences and pipelines, spraying crops, monitoring livestock, and many other services that do not involve "flying people and cargo around". Nearly all of these things can be done more cost effectively with drones.

Your statement makes sense right up until someone flies one of these into the engine of a commercial jet and causes a crash that kills hundreds and does millions in property damage.

Drones need to be regulated. The FAA is throwing a harsh line right now while they work out the regulations because if they don't the courts will hold them to that relaxed line they took while writing the regulations. I have no doubt in the end we'll end up with generally sensible regulations but it's going to take a while.

The problem is you're missing the whole point of the fine article, and of what the FAA is doing. Picture two people standing next to each other, each one at the controls of a 4-pound DJI Phantom with a GoPro hanging off of it. They're both using exactly the same equipment, practicing exactly the same safety protocols, and each flying 35 feet off the ground over the roof of a house, pointing their cameras at the gutters, looking for debris that might make it worth the risk of putting up a ladder for cleaning. You're watching this, and you have no way of knowing which of two operators is doing it for fun, and which is doing it for $20.

Which of the two people do you think should be fined $10,000?

Can you tell by what they're doing, how they're operating, what the video looks like, or anything else? No. You have to look for the outline of that $20 bill in the one operator's pocket. The FAA considers the guy flying for fun to be operating completely within their guidelines. The indistinguishable guy standing right next to him doing exactly the same thing now owes the FAA a $10,000 fine. The FAA says they will not be asking the one guy to pass any sort of test in order to spool up that quadcopter and fly over those gutters. They guy standing next to him will need to invest many hours and hundreds of dollars in order to make exactly the same flight with exactly the same equipment under exactly the same circumstances. Because there's enough cash to buy a pizza in his pocket.

Your statement makes sense right up until someone flies one of these into the engine of a commercial jet and causes a crash that kills hundreds and does millions in property damage.

So, doing something like that in a reckless manner is likely already illegal under a bazillion other laws. Also, a drone isn't going to do much more to an airliner than a bird. As long as you're not buzzing around in the vicinity of airports such an event is extremely unlikely.

The FAA would do better to promote ADS-B/UAT for drones and such, but they can't even get that right for piloted small aircraft. For starters, the government should just bless a ADS-B/UAT transmitter design and let anybody build th

Now, now. That would make sense, which requires people in positions of authority to make rational deductions and judgement calls. Have you ever met a middle manager (a corporate "drone" if you will) in any decent-sized organization who feels both empowered to and is capable of taking responsibility and going out on a limb and making a judgement call on something potentially large and consequential? Now remind me again how big of a beaurocracy the federal government is?

Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube but that he has never received a payment from Google and the revenue he's technically earned from Google’s ads is less than a dollar.

He may not have received money, but he enabled ads on his videos with the hopes of earning money from his videos.

His videos are posted for commercial purposes (earning HIM money), so his flying is commercial purposes. On Youtube they are somewhat lenient if you post videos with copywritten material if they are ad free. If you post copy-written music / TV shows etc with ads enabled they can and will shut you down. In that case you are hoping to earn money from someone else's copy written material, i

They're not really that lenient. If the copyright holder complains to Google, they may, at the copyright holders discretion, have ads embedded in the video and the revenue shared with the copyright holder, instead of the uploader.

This was Google's solution to the "my baby dancing to video was taken down" problem.

The regulations affecting commercial flights are meant to keep people safe from disasters; not to stop people from posting footage. What about all the skydivers who do the same thing? What about passengers on commercial flights? They don't have a license; the airline or pilot does. This is just governance without a shred of common sense. That or someone at the FAA felt like being a dick and didn't expect articles about it.

"What about all the skydivers who do the same thing? What about passengers on commercial flights? They don't have a license; the airline or pilot does."

In both cases, the activity is licensed. The pilot is responsible for the behavior of passengers (hence the laws against interfering with flight crews and their strict enforcement), as are drop pilots:

14 CFR Part 105...Holds the pilot responsible for jumps that create a hazard to air traffic or persons, or property on the ground.

The regulations affecting commercial flights are meant to keep people safe from disasters

How does banning the use of drones in disaster recovery help keep people safe from disasters? The FAA is running a racket to protect pilots of manned aircraft from competition. This has nothing to do with safety.

It's low hanging fruit to get a new source of (penalty/fine) revenue, going after Youtube uploaders. Meanwhile, people like my friend operate a nice $$$ weekend business doing drone-based aerial photography (he tells me it's not all surveying; maybe it's voyeurism, who knows, but one thing's for sure -- the FAA has not and will never hear of him).

The passengers aren't _doing_ anything. You don't need a license to sit in a chair for 8 hours. Skydivers don't jump out of planes in the middle of a city. When they do (for stunts and such) they generally have to get a permit. The FAA isn't being a dick, they're regulating a flying object that if it fell from the sky might kill somebody. This isn't rocket science, heck we regulate those for the same damn reasons. Do you not know what Terminal Velocity is? Haven't you heard the bit about the penny dropped f

The drone operator / video poster WAS actually earning money from the ads, even though it was a tiny amount. Generally speaking, in terms of business rules and regulations, there are a lot of exceptions made for people who make under a specific monetary threshold. I'd like to see the FAA formalize this, so that anyone who makes less than, for example, $1000 a year isn't considered "commercial use". If it later becomes a problem, then address those specific problems at that time.

there are a lot of exceptions made for people who make under a specific monetary threshold. I'd like to see the FAA formalize this, so that anyone who makes less than, for example, $1000 a year isn't considered "commercial use"

If they were paid to tow the banner, it is commercial. If they were doing it out of the kindness of their heart then that is not commercial. That includes no discounts, kickbacks or free items from the place that is being advertised.

What if the banner said "Vote for Joe Candidate" and nothing else?

Exactly the same as above.

The FAA has been pretty tough historically on non-commercial rated pilots performing commercial duties in the past as well. The people who think they are just out to get drone operators are idiots. The FAA has always been about enforcing that pilots

Most cities at have at most less than 10 new helicopters. A new agency has to be pretty big to be able to afford a helicopter. Also helicopters have flight crews on board who are highly trained will avoid collisions at all costs. Helicopter pilots have a vested interest in not colliding as they may die. They have worked out protocols on dealing with big news stories and very few collisions occur. I had to go back to 2007 to find the last one [wikipedia.org]. In the last 40 yeas there have been 43 accidents [wikipedia.org] involving news h